An Inductive Logic Programming Approach for Entangled Tube Modeling in Bin Picking

Bin picking is a challenging problem that involves using a robotic manipulator to remove, one-by-one, a set of objects randomly stacked in a container. When the objects are prone to entanglement, having an estimation of their pose and shape is highly valuable for more reliable grasp and motion planning. This paper focuses on modeling entangled tubes with varying degrees of curvature. An unconventional machine learning technique, Inductive Logic Programming (ILP), is used to construct sets of rules (theories) capable of modeling multiple tubes when given the cylinders that constitute them. Datasets of entangled tubes are created via simulation in Gazebo. Experiments using Aleph and SWI-Prolog illustrate how ILP can build explainable theories with a high performance, using a relatively small dataset and low amount of time for training. Therefore, this work serves as a proof-of-concept that ILP is a valuable method to acquire knowledge and validate heuristics for pose and shape estimation in complex bin picking scenarios.